And Mr. Trimble? He was in a state, to be sure. He left the new dog and its master standing open-mouthed, while he ran as he had not run before in years, to the grocery-store near the station. He seized the telephone receiver, and this message went humming over the wires to the nearest town that lay between Westchester and the Hospital:
“Hello! Hello! I want 569 Wilmington. No, 5-6-9! Yes,—in a hurry!—Hello! That you, Stubbs? All right. Now listen! If you see a fox-terrier,—white, with a brown head and saddle,—going through your town, head him off and keep him for me. Name on his collar is Vanart VI. He slipped out and got away from me. Get that all right? All right. He’ll be along, if he doesn’t get lost, in about two hours or sooner, if he keeps on going like he’s going now. Thanks! Hope you get him. Call him ‘Van.’ Maybe he’ll come so you can catch him easy, if you act friendly. So long!”
So the news traveled ahead, but Van knew nothing about that. He kept on, with his nose pointed homeward, always homeward.
Out of Westchester he went under full head of steam. There were no neighbors with telephones to stop him along the way, and the road was clear. Past meadows and farmhouses, through still forests and thickets of green laurel, wading and leaping across boggy lowlands and scaling rocky highlands, ever he ran on.
A hedge-hog stared stolidly at him from the roadside; a chipmunk sputtered from a stone wall; Van never noticed them. A cat with four kittens basked temptingly on a hitching-block—Van might have been blind for all he saw of them.
By and by he tired a little, and slackened his pace, as if he realized that a long journey cannot be continued at top speed, but he did not stop. Now the long Main Street of Wilmington stretched out before him, and he entered the town at a steady trot.
Down past pleasant houses under stately rows of elms he went. A boy at a stable door called out, “Hey, there, Van!” A child stooped to pat him, and said, “Hello, Van!” He barked, as if to say, “My business leads me elsewhere,” and kept on.
A man stepped out of a corner grocery shop, and held out his hand.
“Here, Van! Here, Van! Good doggie! Come here!”
Van stopped still and looked hard at the man. Could he be an old friend? No, that was surely a stranger. Van edged away as the man reached for his collar, and bobbing his head with a side-long jerk, was off again down the road.